as “continues to be stated with considerable regularity and dogmatic fervor” (Lindberg 1)? I find it incredulous that there is even a debate about the existence of science in antiquity, unless, of course, one agrees with Plato. Plato’s argument, as recounted in Beginnings of Western Science, states, “(in his theory of reminiscence) that sense experience may actually stir the memory and remind the soul of forms that it knew in a prior existence, thus stimulating a process of recollection that will lead to actual knowledge of the forms” ( 37). If this is the case, we do not need science since we can recall from a past existence any knowledge we would obtain through experience and experimentation. However, Plato’s theory does make partial rational sense. It is virtually indisputable that there existed a first man. That first man must have hunted, fished, or cultivated food crops in order to survive. Did that first man learn how to do these things by empirical investigation or did he already possess this
as “continues to be stated with considerable regularity and dogmatic fervor” (Lindberg 1)? I find it incredulous that there is even a debate about the existence of science in antiquity, unless, of course, one agrees with Plato. Plato’s argument, as recounted in Beginnings of Western Science, states, “(in his theory of reminiscence) that sense experience may actually stir the memory and remind the soul of forms that it knew in a prior existence, thus stimulating a process of recollection that will lead to actual knowledge of the forms” ( 37). If this is the case, we do not need science since we can recall from a past existence any knowledge we would obtain through experience and experimentation. However, Plato’s theory does make partial rational sense. It is virtually indisputable that there existed a first man. That first man must have hunted, fished, or cultivated food crops in order to survive. Did that first man learn how to do these things by empirical investigation or did he already possess this